


electrify the resistance in your broken heart

by mapped



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), F/M, First Kiss, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Polyamory, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 01:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18790330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: Outside, Pepper sits with Morgan in her arms. The sun slanting in at just the right angle catches her hair, a swathe of it flame-bright. She looks up at Tony approaching her with Steve. Steve, who seems utterly astonished by the sight of this baby, like he’s never seen anything so small. Steve, whose hair is the same shade as the champagne in the glasses Tony’s holding, and whose presence here on this porch with Tony and Pepper and the baby makes Tony’s whole world fizz with something like possibility, big bubbles of irrepressible delight.2018-2023 reimagined: five better years for Tony, Steve, and Pepper.





	electrify the resistance in your broken heart

Space is beautiful, yeah, but he’s tired of it now. He wants to go home. He misses Pepper so much he feels like he might die of that first, before dehydration or starvation or asphyxiation kills him. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking; he doesn’t _want_ to die of anything ending in -tion. If anything is going to bring him to his end, let it be the thought of Pepper, the memory of her voice.

There’s just so much of it. Space. Space space space space space. The seeming endlessness of it is making everything else lose meaning. This cold uncaring darkness where even the lights of so many stars do not warm him in the slightest. What’s his life in the face of all this? Another time he might have said dust, but now he only _wishes_ he were dust. If he could’ve been so goddamn lucky.

No, he’s still intact, still skin and muscle and bone, still holding on.

Not for long, though. He draws in another shallow breath, thinks about Pepper’s hair between his fingers. He’ll dream of her again, he told her so. It’s always her. Always.

Except for when it isn’t. Dreams don’t listen to him; they’re tricky. Sometimes they’ll give him what he wants, which is a future, which is—a family, a legacy, bringing something into the world that isn’t death but life. And he _is_ lucky, he is. He and Pepper, they worked things out, she came back to him, despite his failings, despite his inability to let go of this fear of the world ending and it being his fault. She came back to him and married him and he’s the _luckiest_.

There was that time he was trying to tell Steve that he and Pepper were on a break, and Steve thought that they were, they were _pregnant_ , oh god. He’s laughing just remembering this, though he’s not really laughing, just—exhaling heavily and then regretting it. And oh, look, Steve’s here. Intruding. This isn’t a dream though, he’s not quite asleep yet, he’s just reminiscing. The past, not the future. Or maybe it’s a dream after all, because Steve’s saying, _Tony, Tony, please, I’m sorry—_

He feels weak, like he might never open his eyes again, like he might just stay here in this dream where Steve is cupping his face with such incredibly warm hands, the light in Steve’s eyes brighter than a thousand stars, but it’s too bright, he’s flinching away, and—

Hang on, that’s not Steve, that’s a—

* * *

Captain Magnificent fucking Miracle brings the _Benatar_ to an impeccable landing, so gentle that after weeks suspended in nothingness, Tony barely even gets to savour the sensation of their spaceship coming to a stop on solid ground.

“We’ve arrived on Earth,” Nebula announces, touching his shoulder.

Nebula had never been to Earth; Tony established that fact the first couple of days they spent together. He can’t believe they’re really here, that a _glowing woman_ powered them all the way here in such a breathtakingly short amount of time. He really thought he was going to die in space, drifting in an indifferent vacuum.

But he’s back on Earth, the planet he wanted to put a suit of armour around, the planet his weapons once devastated. The planet he was prepared to give his life to protect. _Home_. Incredible how that word’s definition has just now expanded to encompass something so huge, an entire planet and not just a house, a person; he could be anywhere on Earth right now and he’d still be home. Nebula wraps an arm around him and helps him up and she’s a blue alien who has no connection to Earth whatsoever, but they’re here, together. She a visitor to an unfamiliar planet and he a supposed _defender of Earth_.

As he gingerly makes his way down the steps, the first face he sees is Captain America’s. Not his wife’s, not his best friend’s, but Captain America, whom he hasn’t seen in two years. Who isn’t his friend anymore. But he doesn’t feel the anger yet. Just relief. He isn’t the only one still here. He isn’t the only Avenger left. Cap is _here_ , holding him up.

Holding him up.

Two years, and these are the circumstances finally bringing them together again, and Tony is so _tired_ , he’s crumbling, _I don’t feel so good_ , he’s going to break down into humiliating tears if he doesn’t see Pepper right now, why is Cap the first one to greet him? Where’s his _wife_ , please—

* * *

The anger comes, like an energy surge, and he’s talking and talking, lashing out with words like Vanko’s electric whips, but none of them are actually the things he’s wanted to say to Steve for the past two years, or maybe they all are—he’s played out their reunion in his head more times than he can count.

When he rips the arc reactor off his chest and grabs Steve’s hand to put it there, he isn’t even really thinking about it. He feels like an empty suit of armor being piloted remotely by a Tony Stark who’s somewhere far away.

It’s only when he falls to the floor, all the energy going out of him and his vision dimming, that it hits him what he’s done, a more melodramatic gesture than anything he’s dreamt of before, and it’s all him, he’s the only one inhabiting his own skin, and he just _handed_ Steve his goddamn—

* * *

When he wakes up, there’s Steve again.

“Tony,” Steve says, in that infuriatingly measured voice that he has. Tony went two years without hearing it and he doesn’t know why he missed it. “We found Thanos. He’s destroyed the stones. Thor killed him. We’re not sure how to move forward from here, but we’ll figure it out.”

Tony doesn’t feel like he’s been passed out long enough for them to have found Thanos already, but who knows. The news doesn’t evoke any emotion in him. He doesn’t really give a damn anymore. “ _You_ can try and figure it out, Cap. I’m done.” 

Steve doesn’t look surprised, but he doesn’t look ready to give up yet either. He takes out the arc reactor from his pocket and offers it to Tony. “Here. You might want this back.”

Tony shakes his head. “I don’t need it. I told you, I’m done. You can keep it, throw it in the trash, I don’t care _what_ you do with it. It’s not mine anymore. Although if you do throw it away you might want to smash it to pieces first—you’re real good at that, I know. Just in case any enterprising thieves try and make away with our garbage. But I mean, it’s up to you, it’s not my fucking responsibility anymore, it’s yours, because none of you would _listen_ to me when we still had the chance.” He’s seething again and has to actively calm himself down.

Steve looks at him with serious weight in his eyes. “I’m not going to smash it to pieces, Tony.”

“Oh, and you’re a man of your word now, are you?” Tony tries to give Steve a flippant smile, but he suspects it looks a tad watery; even his facial muscles aren’t quite up to par. He thinks of lying in the cold, looking out at snow more endless than outer space. “But I guess it’s true you’ve already been there, done that. Twice would be overkill. Where’s your pal Bucky by the way? Didn’t make it?”

Steve’s jawline is hard, set against grief. “He was one of the fifty percent to go. It’s difficult to begin to comprehend how much life was lost—”

“You and I both know he’s worth a lot more than half the universe to you.”

A terrible sadness ripples across Steve’s face, quickly suppressed. He turns and nods at Pepper, who’s sitting by the bed, and he leaves.

Pepper reaches out to put her hand over Tony’s, and he brings it up to his lips and kisses her knuckles. Her ring. God, they’re _married_ , and they’re both still alive, and there’s—there could still be a future for the two of them, if not for half the universe.

“Can we pick up on that dream I had?” he asks.

“What dream?”

“You know what dream.”

“We can pick up on _dinner_ ,” she says, firmly. “Once you’re well enough to have a proper meal, we can go somewhere nice and…” She trails off, probably wondering how easy it will be to find a fancy restaurant that’s still in operation given the state of the world right now.

“We can go anywhere. Anywhere at all. God, Pep, I just wanna have _dinner_ with you, it doesn’t matter where we go or what we eat.” He thinks about shawarma with Cap and Natasha and Bruce and Thor and Barton all those years ago, when they were just the sketchy outlines of a team that had yet to reach its full potential, not the charred and torn-up fragments of a team that never will. He can’t remember what that shawarma had tasted like; he can’t remember the satisfaction of winning, either. But once again he’s narrowly escaped death in space, so he’s at least fully aware of what _that’s_ like. “We could even just get like some Kraft Singles and bread and just sit on a bench somewhere and eat those, how ’bout that. Just anywhere that’s not the Avengers fucking Compound.”

“Kraft Singles?” Pepper repeats, with some disgust and incredulity.

“If you’ll eat a cheeseburger you can stomach a Kraft Single, come on.”

“That’s just it, Tony. I _won’t_ eat a cheeseburger. Is that surprising? Because if it is, you clearly haven’t been paying attention.”

Tony takes both of Pepper’s hands in his and stares into her eyes. “Honey, you can’t be picky about your food here at the end of the world.”

“The world hasn’t ended,” Pepper murmurs, her eyes earnest and bright, her voice the softest thing he’s known in weeks, so soft he could lie his head upon it and sleep like a baby for a whole month. “Not for us. We don’t have to resort to Kraft Singles yet.”

 _Jesus_ , he loves her. But there’s some part of him, now that he’s seen Steve, talked to Steve for the first time in two years, that is buzzing and whirring, like the machinery in his workshop when he’s obsessed with a new idea, a new project, something he can’t let go of even in the middle of the night, even when Pepper is calling him to bed.

Tony thinks, _Steve_ , and everything in him judders into motion, and he won’t rest, not until he—

* * *

Some projects take a lot longer than others.

He’s up late again, tinkering in the garage, and Pepper comes in. He’s used to being the one who stays awake through the night, but lately she’s been having trouble sleeping too. She’s extremely pregnant now, and it’s a wonderful sight, but also deeply terrifying, far more so than the dizzying void of space. A child, _their_ child, and Tony can’t fuck this up, he really really can’t.

“You’re working on that again?” Pepper says, a hand falling gently on his shoulder. “It still looks like the same exact shield to me.”

He gives her a pained look. “You should know I’ve made many enhancements to it but I’ve taken great care to preserve its _iconic_ look. Improving its functionality without altering its appearance isn’t _easy_.”

She squeezes his shoulder. “All right. Are you sure you’re actually doing anything useful and not just brooding over it?”

“I am _not_ brooding,” he says indignantly. But maybe he is a bit. It’s just every time he looks at the shield it still echoes through him, the clang it makes against his suit of armour. Its impact still reverberating, a thrum that goes so deep it’s impossible to separate from his own pulse.

“Tony.” Pepper ruffles his hair. “Are you ever going to give that to him?”

“What’s the point?” He leans back and presses an ear against the swell of her belly to hear a different thud, the sounds of their baby kicking. So much fight in them, though they’re coming into a world that’s already lost. “He doesn’t need it anymore.”

“If that’s the case, why are you still playing with it every night? I don’t think that shield is only about what Steve needs.”

He sits up straight. “What do you think it’s about?”

“Why don’t you tell me what it’s about?”

He pulls a face at her. “Is this why we got married? So we could just volley the same question back and forth at each other all night long?” He gets up, dances away from her towards the door. “Can I get you something to eat? What’re you craving this fine 3am?”

“I’m not craving anything except a straightforward answer to my question.” Pepper stalks—well, waddles—towards him. “That’s why we got married, so you could tell me things. And maybe I’d also like a grilled cheese sandwich.”

“ _Now_ who’s grateful for the existence of Kraft Singles?” He grins. “I’m on it.”

“Hang on, you’ve got to talk to me first.” She slumps against the door which he was about to open. “Don’t make me ask you again.”

“I want to make amends,” he says, quietly, looking at the white floor. “The fact that he isn’t a pile of dust on the ground somewhere is luck that I shouldn’t _squander_ , Pep.”

Pepper strokes his cheek with her thumb. “But you don’t want to be the first to reach out?” 

“No, I… I needed him, and he wasn’t there, and I thought that was that, but it turns out—I still need him. Even when the fight’s over. Even when all that’s left is just living our lives as best as we can in this wreck of a world. Even when I have you, my incredible amazing extraordinary wife, and this gorgeous house by the lake, and our sure-to-be adorable baby on the way. I still need him.”

“You mean you love him.”

Tony growls, low and frustrated, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. “Yes. I do. But I love _you_ , Pepper, and that trumps everything else.”

She laughs, shaking her head a little. “I know you love me, Tony, but I also know that it’s never trumped everything else. You’re Iron Man. _That’s_ what trumps everything else. You can’t let go of that because it’s who you are. And you know what Iron Man can’t let go of? Captain America. Because Captain America was meant to be his friend, his partner, somebody who could be by his side through every chaotic situation the world threw at them, and instead Captain America left him bleeding and broken on a Siberian hillside.”

“Wow, Ms Potts, you sure do have a lot of feelings on this subject,” Tony says, a little shocked and a little in awe, running his fingers through Pepper’s sunset-gold hair.

“Not as many as you do, Mr Stark, I’m sure.”

“And you’re okay with this?”

“Tony,” Pepper says, in her impatient voice, “remember when I came back to you after we had our break and you would take out that silly little flip phone all the time and ponder it like you were staring down a deep well of misery? Yes, I noticed, it’s probably the most low-tech thing you’ve ever owned. And you were—oh my god you were so destroyed over what happened with Steve. But you were destroyed over our break too, I could see it. And I couldn’t let you go either. Not despite of everything you are, but _because of_ everything you are. So here we are.” Pepper takes Tony’s hand and kisses the centre of his palm. “I love you, Iron Man.”

Tony’s going to cry. God, is she the one who’s pregnant or is he? No, no, it’s definitely her; he can’t take credit for all of the stuff she’s going through. He can only look at her adoringly and with misty eyes.

She smiles at him, looking a little misty-eyed herself, before batting his shoulder. “Now go make me a grilled cheese sandwich. With Kraft Singles. Many Singles. Kraft Multiples.”

She herds him out of the door, but he turns and takes one last glance at the shield on the table, red, white and blue, and he thinks maybe, maybe it’s time to—

* * *

A support group. Right. Of course Cap is running one.

People are drifting in. It’s a pretty big group, although Tony has nothing by which to gauge whether its size is unusual for a support group, having never been to one of any kind.

Even though he’s wearing sunglasses and a sloppy outfit in order to blend in, Steve spots him instantly, eyes widening. He walks over, stands too close to Tony and asks, under his breath, “What are you doing here?”

“Can’t anyone come?” Tony says jovially, peering at Steve over the frames of his sunglasses. “This is a support group, isn’t it? What if I need your support?”

“Then you can come talk to me any time you want, outside of this group.” Steve’s face is lined with weariness. Even his hair’s flat. Tony just stares at him obscurely through the dark lenses until he gives up. “Stay if you must, but try not to draw attention to yourself.”

Time was Tony might have made a scene. But he’s matured, mellowed in imminent fatherhood. He’s just here to see Steve, that’s all. He grabs a chair and sits down. People in the group go round in a circle and talk, and Steve listens and offers them reassuring remarks and comforting comments. It’s that _voice_ he has. Broad and steady, holding all the world’s understanding in it. Looking around, Tony sees that everyone here can’t help but believe in it.

He knows better.

When it’s his turn, he passes. Steve’s eyes linger on him for just a second.

At the end, Tony waits for everyone to clear out before piping up; he keeps his distance from Steve, drumming his fingers on the back of a plastic chair. “Doesn’t it get pretty overwhelming to be confronted with the consequences of your inadequacy like this? All these strangers, so many of them, telling you about the kind of issues they’re facing because of _our_ failures?”

Steve is stacking up chairs, because of course he told everyone there was no need to put away the chairs; he would take care of all that. “I don’t think of it like that. It helps me. To do what I can to help others. I have to keep looking for ways to do my part.” He glances at Tony. “You didn’t seem like you needed any support.”

“I do. But it turns out I do wanna bring it up in private after all.” Tony keeps his hands on the chair, even as it’s the only one left standing on its own in the room, and Steve crosses his arms and watches Tony expectantly. Those clear blue eyes. Can Tony ever look at them again without seeing bitter frost? “There’s this friend I have. Well, we used to be friends. And then we got into a huge fight and beat each other up pretty bad and didn’t speak for two years, and since the world almost ended and we all lost so many people and we’re walking around like these—these _ghosts_ of our past selves, I just don’t think it was worth it.”

“Tony,” Steve says, with profound surprise.

“What, Cap, you got no platitudes for me?” Tony smiles; it’s a brittle effort.

“It wasn’t worth it,” Steve agrees, softly, and Tony’s heart billows. “If we’d stayed together as a team, we could’ve…”

Tony picks up the chair and turns away to slot it onto the top of a stack. Teamwork, sure, that’s all this is about. Not something buried much, much deeper and closer to the heart, like shrapnel. “Here I thought _I_ was the one plagued with regrets.”

“You’re not the only one.”

Tony turns back. The room’s cleared now, just a stretch of empty floor between him and Steve. Tony is tired of keeping that something at bay, trying to stop it from ever piercing his heart. Or maybe it did a long time ago and he’s just been living with it this whole time, and he’ll live with it forever.

He clears his throat. “Well, this was fun, glad we did this. But I gotta go. Come visit us some time, will you? The baby’s gonna be here soon.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, softly. “I will. I missed you, Tony.”

Tony gets out of there before he does anything stupid, and he drives away. Halfway there, he gets a call from Pepper, and when he answers, she screams down the phone and he nearly crashes the car, though thankfully his car’s much smarter than him. He babbles, “I’m on my way, shit, Pep, I’m on my way,” and oh god, they’re really going to have a—

* * *

It’s wild how a baby can seem more luminous to his eyes than an arc reactor.

Morgan is a jewel. His and Pepper’s child, with her little face and little hands and little feet, glowing and gurgling.

The lake house is playing host to probably the biggest crowd it’ll ever see, which is to say just short of a dozen people. Music and champagne flowing through the rooms, a kind of composure that never graced the parties of Tony’s youth. Pepper picked the music because her music tastes run a lot calmer than his, definitely more suited to this brunch party than his favourite tunes would be. Tony crunches a crudité between his teeth and it’s the most normal he’s felt since the Decimation, even though he’s a _dad_ now, which is extremely not normal, but somehow it feels natural, right, and he hasn’t been freaking out over it as much as he thought he might.

Rhodey says, “I can’t believe I witnessed you two’s first kiss and now I’m holding your _baby_. Is this really happening?”

“Yes, it is,” Tony replies, while Pepper is laughing with her hands over her face, no doubt reliving the memory of their first kiss. “And we’d like you to be Morgan’s oddfather. We hear that’s what people are calling non-religious godparents. Oddparents.”

“Wow man. I’m honoured. I’d love to be her oddfather.” Rhodey looks down at Morgan in her sweet blue onesie, her darling pink face, and she slowly blinks up at him. “I’m gonna be honest, I already love her more than I love you guys.”

“Aw, that’s sweet.” Tony puts his hands on Rhodey’s shoulders. “I hereby appoint you Morgan’s oddfather.” 

Pepper, looking _stunning_ in her long green dress, tips her champagne flute towards Rhodey—her first glass of alcohol in nine months. “To Rhodey,” she says, “Morgan’s oddfather!” And Tony follows suit.

Natasha appears on the porch in a dark red dress, her movements uncharacteristically hesitant. “She’s beautiful,” she murmurs. “Can I hold her?”

“Of course,” Pepper says, and Rhodey carefully hands over Morgan to Natasha. Natasha seems to slip immediately into a different world as she cradles Morgan, a world where she is gentle and nobody expects her to be otherwise. Tony thinks about how great she was with Barton’s children, and how they’re all gone now, Barton himself missing too. Natasha has so few people left in the world.

“Romanoff,” he says, deciding. “I want you to be Morgan’s oddmother—like a godmother, but weird and quirky just like we are. Would you like that?”

Pepper shoots him a quick shocked glance. They hadn’t discussed this part, because it’s completely improvised. But she smiles, and there’s nothing forced about her expression, which means she approves, which is good, because he might often do things without her approval, but not this. He wouldn’t have suggested it if he hadn’t been certain—well, almost certain, eighty-five percent certain—she’d be on board with it.

Natasha looks even more shocked, and Tony considers that an achievement. Her mouth goes slack, her eyes round. Then she looks— _happy_. Her lips curving slowly upward, a soft light in her eyes, a fullness in her cheeks. “Yeah, I’d like that.” She ducks her head. “Lovely to meet you, Morgan.” 

After that, Nebula wanders over. Tony can tell that Pepper’s nervous about handing over her baby to the Blue Meanie—the only interaction Pepper’s had with Nebula before this was when she thanked Nebula for looking after Tony in space—but Tony’s confident that Nebula can hold a baby just fine; she’s attentive and cautious and has a strong protective streak. And she does indeed do a stellar job of holding Morgan, even if she looks a little stiff and awkward the whole time. “A daughter,” she mutters, her face inscrutable as always as she stares down at the baby.

Tony goes into the kitchen to refill his glass of champagne and Pepper’s, and on the way out he bumps into Steve. Leather jacket, slicked-back hair. Exhaustion that never fades from his face. Tony wonders if Steve, given the chance, would choose to go back into the ice and sleep for another seventy years.

“There you are,” Tony says. Steve had driven here with Natasha but made himself scarce since arrival—Tony hadn’t been able to pin him down till this moment. “Welcome to probably the humblest abode I’ve had my entire life.” 

“You’ve got a beautiful house, Tony,” Steve says, looking around very deliberately, his eyes sweeping over the whole of the living room. “It’s so peaceful out here. You could forget anything bad’s ever happened in the world.”

Tony thinks of the photo of Peter he was looking at even as he was pouring champagne back there in the kitchen. “I don’t forget.” He knocks back half his glass. “But yeah, I thought it would be good to get away from the city, build a little pocket of paradise for ourselves where we can. Take a page out of Barton’s book, as I said.”

Steve nods. “The simple life.” 

“Chopping wood and all that.” Tony flashes Steve a breezy smile, to hide his pain at the past they’ve lost, when they last had this conversation. “You could still have it too, you know.”

“Me? Now?” Steve rubs a hand over his eyes. “I don’t know, Tony. I thought I had a home, with the Avengers. But it turns out that home’s always going to be a fragile concept. And part of that is—my fault.” His gaze slides briefly down to meet Tony’s before skittering away again. “I still believe in what I believe in; that hasn’t changed. But I just wish I’d given more care to harmony. And now most of the people I’ve held dear are gone. I don’t know how I could ever get home from here. I don’t know what I want anymore.”

“You have Natasha.”

“Yeah, I have her.” Steve smiles, small but fond. “She just told me you’ve made her Morgan’s godmother. That’s wonderful.”

“Oddmother,” Tony corrects him.

Steve blinks but accepts it. “This… This family she’s found with us, it’s so important to her. And I think when we were divided, two years ago… That’s caused a great deal of pain and conflict for her.”

Not just for her.

Tony twirls the stem of his champagne flute between his fingers, holding the other steady. “She’s seen me go through _a lot_.” An ill-advised decision to drive in the Monaco Grand Prix, for example. Palladium poisoning, ouch. All ancient history, but Natasha had witnessed it all. “Without her, I wouldn’t be a part of the Avengers. Oh wait, that’s no thanks to her, since she was the one who recommended that I be _excluded_ from the initiative.”

Steve smirks. “What would Earth have done without you?”

“Not sure. It seems to have all gone pretty wrong even _with_ my involvement.” Every conversation winds up in a dead end these days.

But Steve just says, “Would’ve been far worse without it.” And yes, that was always his stance, wasn’t it?

“Maybe,” Tony concedes. “Now, please, Morgan’s dying to meet you.” He waves his hand towards the door that leads to the porch.

“She’s a month old, Tony, she isn’t dying to meet anyone.” But Steve lets himself be ushered in the direction of the porch, though he stops still in the doorway, his fists clenched at his sides, more nervous than he should be at the prospect of meeting a baby. “Was there… Was there ever a time when you might have asked me to be Morgan’s godfather too?”

“Oddfather,” Tony corrects him again, before he has to force himself to consider the full weight of what Steve’s asking him. “Yeah. Of course there was a time. And there might be again. Now come on, Morgan doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Outside, Pepper sits with Morgan in her arms. The sun slanting in at just the right angle catches her hair, a swathe of it flame-bright. She looks up at Tony approaching her with Steve. Steve, who seems utterly astonished by the sight of this baby, like he’s never seen anything so small. Steve, whose hair is the same shade as the champagne in the glasses Tony’s holding, and whose presence here on this porch with Tony and Pepper and the baby makes Tony’s whole world fizz with something like possibility, big bubbles of irrepressible delight.

Pepper stands up and smiles at Steve. Morgan passes from her hands to his. 

She glances at Tony with a knowing softness in her eyes, and Morgan’s in Steve’s hands, hands whose violence Tony is intimately familiar with. _No trust_ , he remembers saying, but that memory’s a blur. He’d been near death, feral with fear, having come face to face with all his nightmares at once and left savaged but alive to deal with the aftermath, to think on the loss, and in that bleak wilderness of pain and guilt, that black void of space punctured by cold and distant lights, he was _alone_ , and he shouldn’t have been.

But Steve is holding his baby, and Tony’s not in space or Siberia, he’s here in his house by the lake, and he trusts Steve, he does, with all his heart.

He puts down the glasses of champagne on the table and goes over to Pepper’s side and kisses her cheek.

“Ever think about the fact that if Steve hadn’t gone in the ice, he would’ve held _you_ as a baby?” Pepper whispers in his ear, and he flinches and turns his head to glare at her.

“No, and I don’t _need_ to think about that, thank you Pep,” he whispers back. “I much prefer him here, holding _our_ baby.”

Pepper chuckles, leaning her head on his shoulder. “You would, wouldn’t you.”

Steve and the baby have been cooing back and forth to each other, which is just _incredible_ to behold. “Morgan,” Steve says. “It’s a nice name. How did you choose it?”

“I had an uncle called Morgan,” Pepper answers, at the same time that Tony says, “It came to me in a dream.”

Pepper gestures at Tony with her hand to let him continue, and he says again, “It came to me in a dream, as things often do.”

Steve tilts his head, looking at Tony, but Tony isn’t thinking about the vision he had of death and destruction spilling from space. He’s thinking about all the times he’s dreamt of Steve here in this house, and then about all the times he’s dreamt of Steve, warm in his bed. Yeah, if he could make _that_ a reality, that’d be something.

“I wanna hold her now,” he says, selfishly, just so that in the process of taking Morgan from Steve, his skin can brush against Steve’s, casually, their hands overlapping.

So much for not liking being handed things.

And all too soon everyone’s leaving. He waves goodbye to Steve and Natasha who are getting in their car, and as they speed off, vanishing down the path through the trees, Tony’s already trying to think of excuses to get Steve to come visit again. He can’t bear the thought of having to wait a year, or even a month, or even—

* * *

A week later, Steve shows up again at nightfall.

“Uh,” Tony says when he opens the door to see Steve there. He grapples for words but they all recede from him. “Hi. This is unexpected.”

“You said don’t be a stranger,” Steve says. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah. I’m just making dinner.” He stands back to allow Steve to come through the door. In the living room, Steve takes the chair in the corner, so Tony can sprawl over the sofa. “So what’s on your mind?”

“Coming here last week… Well, when we saw Barton’s home all those years ago, it didn’t call to me. Not the way it called to you, and made you want all this.” Steve looks around as he did last week and takes in the room, the fireplace, the bookshelves, the candles. “That life, it held no enticement for me, or so I thought at the time. But I’ve come to recognise that it doesn’t really matter to me whether it’s the simple life or the complicated life, as long as I’m fighting alongside people I care about.”

“Fighting?” Tony raises an eyebrow. “I think that’s the complicated life you’re looking for, Cap.”

Steve smiles wryly. “No. I mean. It doesn’t have to be fighting. But that’s the kind of thinking I’ve been stuck in. The fight just doesn’t seem to end, for me. Always something in the world I have to stand up for, to defend. But after I came here, and saw this, saw you… This life started to call to me. And it’s because of you. Because this is _your_ life, Tony. And I want to be a part of it.”

“You want to be friends again.”

“Yeah.”

“And… more?” Tony asks, with trepidation and hope in equal measure.

“What?” Steve says, sounding flustered. “I… Tony, you’re married.”

“That’s not a no.” Tony’s heart is pounding in his ears. “Steve… We’re already friends again. You held my daughter last week. You didn’t come all the way here just to ask me for friendship. You’re telling me you want this life, with me.”

Steve looks miserable, which is frankly stupid because he was the one who turned up unannounced to broach this subject. “I guess it’s something I’ve thought about, on my part. But you and Pepper are happy together and I don’t want to disrupt that in any way. I just want to be present. To see you more often, to be around to watch your daughter grow up. That’s all I’m asking for.”

“But you’re saying you _do_ want me. That if Pepper were out of the picture you’d be kissing me right now.”

“Tony,” Steve says, sharply, the word raw like a wound. “Don’t say that.”

“Because Pepper’s okay with us. If you’re saying we can be a thing. She’s okay with that. She and I have talked about it. It’s just whether _you’re_ okay with me and Pep still being together.”

Steve’s eyes are glimmering with surprise. “You two are beautiful together,” he says, his breath in his throat, his voice the shakiest Tony’s ever heard it.

“Yeah, I know, she’s everything to me,” Tony says, feeling the sincerity of every word he’s saying just as he can feel his own frantic heartbeat in his ribcage right now. “But so are you. It’s funny how those two statements can both be true. Do you believe me?”

“I—” Steve begins, but Tony doesn’t give him time to answer.

“You are _everything_ to me, Steve.” He rises from the sofa, takes the few steps towards Steve in the corner of the room. “Hey Pep!” he shouts, and he’s close enough to see Steve jump. “Dinner’s ready! And there’s a Captain America in our living room!”

He reaches down for Steve’s hand, and he holds it. Steve doesn’t resist. They lace their fingers together, looking into each other’s eyes, and Tony feels weak like he’s been drifting in space for a month, hungry, _starved_ and losing air, and in Steve’s wide blue eyes the whole universe lives—not half but all of it, the way it should be, teeming and vital and wondrous.

He hears Pepper’s footsteps coming down the spiral stairs, and she’s here, behind him.

“Can I kiss Steve?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says, and he feels her hand come to rest on the small of his back as he gives Steve a trembling smile and leans down and kisses him, and it’s everything Siberia wasn’t. Heat and softness and yielding, and so much care.

When he breaks off the kiss, he staggers back and looks at Steve and then at Pepper with undisguised joy, both their faces warm in the firelight, contentment curling around them all like smoke. “Dinner time,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “Man, I wish I’d made something fancy now like coq au vin, but it’s just meatballs and spaghetti.”

“I like meatballs and spaghetti,” Steve says, in a slightly dazed tone of voice, which just enriches Tony’s glee. 

Pepper squeezes Tony’s arm. “I’ll lay the table.”

Alone with Steve again, Tony gives him another kiss, bringing one leg up and bending it to slot alongside Steve’s thigh so that he’s half-kneeling on the chair, but something in Steve’s pocket digs into him. “What on earth have you got in there?” he asks, patting Steve’s pocket.

“Um.” Steve takes it out and shows it to Tony in his open palm.

It’s Tony’s arc reactor, the one that houses the nanoparticles for Mark L. Tony splutters. “You kept it?”

“Yeah, I told you I wasn’t going to smash it to pieces,” Steve says, and now he’s wearing the dopiest smile. Cheesy bastard.

“That’s fine, but why were you just carrying it around with you?”

“I don’t keep it on me all the time,” Steve hurries to explain. “I have it with me because I wanted to give it back to you.”

“I’ve already made more of those things.”

“I’m not giving it back to you for a practical purpose.”

“Right. You’re giving it back to me because it’s _symbolic_. I got it. But it would be more symbolic if you kept it.” Tony slowly nudges each of Steve’s fingers to close them over the arc reactor again. “It’s yours. It’s always been yours.”

And he thought _Steve_ was a cheesy bastard.

“Always?” Steve asks, rapt.

“Yeah. Well. I mean I’ve been _attracted_ to you since the beginning, but. I can’t remember when I started to feel like this. Must’ve been before Sokovia. So. A while.”

“I didn’t know,” Steve says, his free hand coming up to run through Tony’s hair, fingers tracing behind Tony’s ear. “I didn’t know. All I knew was every time I thought of you after we fought, it was like barbed wire in my chest. And I wanted you to call, Tony. I wanted you to call, not to ask me for help, but just to talk to me. I just wanted to hear your _voice_. But you never called. And I never did, either. And then my phone rang, and it was that number on the cell I’d given you, and I thought it’d be you when I picked up, but it was Bruce, telling me the world was ending. I really thought it would be you. But he said you’d gone into space. And you didn’t come back, and we thought you might really be gone, one of the unlucky half, or worse. It was hell. It was hell that you were gone and we hadn’t even spoken in two years and the last time we saw each other I’d nearly killed you.” Steve’s face crumples as he says this, and Tony kisses his forehead, heart bursting.

“Hey, we’re okay,” Tony murmurs.

“That’s why I came tonight,” Steve says, voice ragged. “I realised I shouldn’t wait to hear your voice again. I should never have waited.”

Tony doesn’t notice that Pepper’s in the room until she says, sounding startled by the scene before her, “I left you guys for two minutes and you’re sobbing all over each other?”

Tony gives her a rueful smile, and she drapes herself over his back, hugging him from behind. Steve looks embarrassed, wiping his face with his sleeve, but he’s perfect, and Tony thinks—yeah. This is it. This is, at long last, it. Where all his nightmares and all his dreams have finally led him, to the place where this moment is the only moment. Not the next moment or the moment before; not grief over the past or anxiety about the future, but this moment, complete in itself, absolute and all-encompassing.

* * *

A picnic by the lake. Life can really be just this simple. A blanket with a spread of food laid out, bread and cheese—not Kraft Singles but real cheese—and ham and strawberries—because even though Pepper’s allergic, Morgan loves them. But Morgan’s off playing hide and seek with Steve, and it’s just him and Pepper here, lying on the grass.

“These tomatoes are gorgeous,” Tony says, eating another slice all by itself. “You really have some green fingers.”

“Thank you. Next year we can try growing more. Maybe cucumbers, carrots—oh, or how about broccoli…”

They’d been talking about all the things that Pepper’s been trying to do lately with Stark Industries to help keep the world running with half the population gone, but Tony’s drowsy in the sun now and glad for an lighter topic of conversation.

“We should get chickens,” he says, without really being that invested in whether they shoud actually get chickens, but Pepper starts seriously considering it and listing the pros and cons of getting chickens, and that’s nice, too.

He spots Steve and Morgan approaching out of the corner of his eye, and he sits up, groaning when he sees that Morgan’s rolling something towards him like a wheel.

“Morguna! You hid in the garage?”

“Yeah, and Papa found me,” she says cheerfully. They hadn’t made Steve one of Morgan’s oddfathers, in the end; he’d just become one of her fathers, playing nearly as big a role as Tony. He only spends every other week at the lake house; the rest of the time he’s at the Compound, with Natasha, directing what remains of the Avengers team in their efforts to stabilise the universe, and he’s still running his little support group, which gets smaller every year. 

“I should’ve seen this coming,” Tony says, feeding Morgan a strawberry.

“What _is_ this, Tony?” Steve asks, crouching down next to Morgan and grinning. “Is this a shield? For me?”

“That is _not_ for you, it’s for the recycling, or it should be. It was a bad idea I had one time.”

Pepper sits up too. “I haven’t seen that. That’s very different. What happened to the ‘iconic look’?”

“This was one of the _early_ prototypes I made,” Tony mutters. “Before I realised that the iconic look was key.”

“It looks kind of like the arc reactor,” Pepper observes, helpfully. “Your original ones, before you got all into nanoparticles or whatever.”

“Yeah. That was the idea. But I must have been drunk when I came up with it.” Tony covers his face with one hand. “I don’t want to look at that. Can someone take it away please? It’s atrocious design. It’s so ugly. What was I thinking, how could I let _Captain America_ walk into the battlefield with that thing?”

Steve laughs. “It’s not that bad.”

“That’s because you have no taste,” Tony snipes. “Oh my god, why is it still here? Throw it in the lake! Morguna!” He claps his hands.

“No, Morgan, don’t,” Steve says, holding her hand. “Okay, it’s pretty bad. But if you made it for me, I should get to decide what to do with it.”

“I didn’t make it for you, it was an _experiment_. I’m going to roll it into the lake myself.” He gets up to do so but Steve grabs his ankle and Tony’s an ordinary human who can’t contend with that super strength, so he rolls his eyes instead and sits back down.

“Steve, have you seen my ‘Proof that Tony Stark has a heart’ memento?” Pepper says, conspiratorially, and takes a sip of her white wine.

“Yes,” Steve replies smoothly. “The shield does look a lot like it.”

“I don’t like it because it’s not colourful,” Morgan contributes, which is valid criticism, because it’s an exceedingly dull shield, mostly grey with only a thin circle of blue and the muted gold around the edges, and Tony’s usually a lot bolder than that with his colour usage. “But why doesn’t Daddy like it?”

“Daddy doesn’t like it because it’s embarrassing,” Tony says. “You should never try to design anything when drunk. Got it?”

Pepper gives Tony a swat on the shoulder and Morgan says, very seriously, “Got it.” She puts a fist under her chin pensively. “Why is it embarrassing?”

“Yeah, why is it?” Pepper asks, innocent as Morgan.

“This was years ago. We’d”—he jerks his chin in Steve’s direction—“only just fought. I needed to make you a new shield, because I didn’t want to be unprepared for any eventuality. I didn’t even want to _look_ at your actual shield again, but I had it in a corner of my workshop somewhere. So I set about trying to come up with something completely different. And all I could think about was what you’d broken. My arc reactor. I thought it would be… I don’t know, _ironic_ , to make you carry around something you’d shattered.”

“Tony,” Steve says, heavily. 

To Morgan, Tony turns and says, “It’s embarrassing because it’s like Daddy wanted to give Papa his heart to wave around in public.”

Morgan wrinkles her nose. “Daddy’s heart looks like _that_?”

Tony has to marvel again at the wonder of it, that Morgan’s never known her father with the arc reactor. Never known Iron Man. Though she’s dipped in and out of the garage and seen all the gear lying around, she is wholly, blissfully unaware of him as somebody who’s saved the world. She only knows him as the person who’s popping another strawberry into her mouth.

And he hopes she never has to know otherwise.

“It’s not embarrassing,” Steve says, his shoulder pressing against Tony’s. “It makes sense when you explain it. Rather than being sentimental, it actually seems kind of… spiteful?” His lips twitch into a smile.

“Oh good,” Tony says, and Steve kisses him softly.

“You should be embarrassed,” Pepper says, gently jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow. “You made that ‘bad idea’ and then you kept it even after we moved house _twice_? Please. I bet you were brooding over it all the time when I wasn’t looking.”

Tony coughs, looking out at the lake and pretending he didn’t hear that, and Pepper’s whispering something in Morgan’s ear that makes her snort with laughter, and Steve’s still got his hand around Tony’s ankle for no reason at all. The sun glitters on the lake, and Tony tries his best not to ask himself how he can make this last forever.

* * *

Morgan pounces on Natasha the moment she emerges from the car, as Morgan always does when her oddmom comes for lunch—she recognises Natasha’s car. But Natasha isn’t alone this time.

Ant-Man. Scott Lang. Who they’d all assumed had been one of the victims of the Decimation.

Tony’s heart disappears to another dimension for a bit. He goes to get Steve, and they have an insane discussion about time travel, and Tony doesn’t want this, he doesn’t. He has everything he wants right here.

But then, as soon as Natasha and Scott leave after lunch, which was a tense and sombre affair, even though it’s normally fun and lively with Natasha around, Tony thinks: Peter.

Steve has been strangely silent the whole time, but now he says, “You have to try. Tony. I don’t want to risk what we have either, but I know I’ll never be able to forgive myself if we don’t try, and I can’t live like that.” He’s sitting on the sofa, gripping a cushion so hard feathers might fly any second.

And Tony thinks about the Winter Soldier with his vibranium arm and the wreckage of his parents’ car, and Siberia again, Siberia. Steve choosing his parents’ killer over him. But he shouldn’t worry about that. If they try this, they probably won’t succeed and they probably won’t live. Bucky Barnes shouldn’t be a concern at all.

Tony—Tony’s had four good years with Steve.

His mind’s already racing for solutions. Time travel. It’s a challenge he can’t back away from, a problem he has to solve, now that it’s been dangled in front of him as a possibility. He wants to be the person to make it work, and he still wants to save the world. But especially Peter Parker. Dumb kid who never knew when to stay well away from trouble. Dumb kid who also wanted to save the world.

He spends a few days working on it.

And then it’s done.

And Morgan loves him _three thousand_.

And Pepper asks him whether he would be able to rest if he stops.

And he knows in his heart what the answer is, but he doesn’t want it to be true.

He goes to Steve’s room, where Steve is watching a film on his tablet. This room has belonged to Steve since their first kiss—or in Tony’s mind, since he first had this house built. Steve always sleeps in this room, and Pepper always sleeps in the master bedroom. When Steve’s here, Tony usually sleeps in this room with him, and it’s become as full of memories as any other room in this house. Tony takes a moment to appreciate the warmth he feels just looking at Steve sitting up on the bed in this cosy room which in the beginning had lain cold and empty and impersonal, a guest bedroom never used, inhabited only by Tony’s longing and hope. Now the walls are covered in sketches, the strokes of Steve’s pencil confident and sure, and there’s the odd collaboration with Morgan too, in bright, messy crayon. 

Drawings of the forest, the lake. Portraits of Pepper—and of Tony.

“What’re you watching?” Tony asks, leaning against the door jamb.

“Um,” Steve says, which Tony takes to mean that he hasn’t really been watching anything but just staring blankly and thinking.

“I figured out time travel. And Morgan loves me three thousand.” Two things it kills him to say, even the second time round. Both things equally momentous and gut-wrenching.

Steve’s jaw drops just like Pepper’s did. “You figured it out? Tony, you’re amazing.” He reaches out with both his hands and Tony steps forward to hold them. “I… You know, this is horrible to admit, but maybe there was a part of me that was hoping you wouldn’t.”

Tony loves him for saying that, but he knows—they both know—what the right thing to do is, now that Tony _has_ figured out time travel. He sits down on the bed next to Steve, and he puts his head on Steve’s shoulder. “You’ll get Barnes back,” he says.

“Yeah. And Sam. And Wanda. So many others.”

Tony is quiet, and Steve adds, “We’re going to be okay. I promise. I won’t let anything change what we have.”

 _You can’t fight death._ Tony knows how close he came to death five years ago. He knows how close he might come to death again. But he doesn’t give voice to that fear. He just asks, with all the tenderness that he feels, “Come to bed with me and Pepper tonight? I don’t want to be without either of you.”

And Steve does, and it's the best night Tony’s ever had, even laced with heartache.

The next morning, Tony says goodbye to his dearest Morguna, and to Pepper, with a shower of hugs and kisses that can’t even begin to convey the depth of his affection for them, and he drives to the Compound with Steve. When he climbs out of the car, he says to Steve, “Wait, there’s something in the trunk you might need.”

Steve opens the trunk and sifts through towels and stuffed animals with a puzzled expression on his face, until he finds the shield buried underneath all that. The Captain America shield, with the iconic star-spangled look that you just can’t beat. “Tony,” Steve says, in a strangled voice. “How long’s this been in here?”

“Four years, give or take?” Tony says, squinting. “I took it with me when I came to your support group that one time. I thought I’d give it to you, I had this whole speech planned, I was going to confess my love dramatically and all that, but I don’t know, it didn’t seem like you were ready for that yet—”

But Steve’s pushing him against the car and kissing him, and Tony thinks—yeah, all of this was worth it, is worth it, and will always be worth it, no matter what comes.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic ends where it does because for the purposes of this particular 'verse, I think this is all I needed from it—I haven't made up my mind one way or the other about whether Tony dies, so you can think of it however you like. But I have made up my mind about Natasha: there's no way this Natasha dies on Vormir. A woman isn't a monster and doesn't deserve death just because she is biologically incapable of giving birth! Yeah, I'm still pretty mad about that.
> 
> Anyway, this is my first Steve/Tony fic, and I've shipped them since CA:TFA came out. I'm very happy to have finally finished a fic about them, after nearly eight years. Back in 2012 I wrote several Steve/Tony WIPs that were left unfinished. But I'm hoping—if people like this—I might now write more, though not necessarily in this 'verse, because I have more feelings about them than ever.
> 
> Title is from the song "Never Look Away" by Vienna Teng.
> 
> The arc reactor shield was based on [this](https://reluming.tumblr.com/post/184798556076/caps-shield-as-the-arc-reactor-sign-me-up).
> 
> And finally, thanks for reading! Comments are really appreciated, and I'm [reluming](http://reluming.tumblr.com) on Tumblr. I'd love to chat with more Steve/Tony shippers, so please do say hi if you'd like!


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